by N. Heller
Li Tao did not move a single inch. She placed her left hand on the handrails and watched with a smile as the abnormal wind lashed out at Lin Sanjiu.
Due to the limited area within the black tower, the staircase was very narrow, perhaps only wide enough for one person. The offensive attack swept toward her almost like a whirlwind. Lin Sanjiu immediately found herself in a thorny situation. Thought she had already retreated down a few steps, the narrow space made it impossible to evade the black shadow which headed directly at her. She gritted her teeth and held the handrail with one hand before flinging her body into the air. The attacker nearly brushed the tip of her nose before it stopped by the nearest bend.
Lin Sanjiu hung from the handrails and if she looked down there would be only a bottomless darkness beneath her. At this height, anyone would be afraid of falling. Lin Sanjiu did not dare to look down, and when the creature stopped she quickly took advantage of the time she had and jumped back onto the stairs. It was only then that she saw the general appearance of her attacker.
It was a nearly two-meter-tall figure, with a sharp, pointed head. Its head looked comparatively small when compared its thick neck. It did have something similar to a human’s shoulders, two arms which extend from its shoulders and… another two arms growing out from both sides of its body.
"Duo-duoluozhong?" Lin Sanjiu exclaimed softly. As soon as she saw anything obviously inhuman yet with an appearance similar to a human, the first thing that came to her mind was that it was a duoluozhong.
"No, it isn’t." Li Tao, who did nothing while all that was happening, replied as she stood at the end of the staircase. "Duoluozhongs are such disgusting things."
Because of the sudden turn of events, Lin Sanjiu found herself between a rock and a hard place, Li Tao was to her left and the strange creature was on her right. Lin Sanjiu shuffled her legs, pressing her back against the wall before she took a deep breath and asked cautiously, "What is that?"
"St. Peter, come here."
Hearing Li Tao’s voice, which carried a hint of cheerfulness, the tall figure turned its body and slowly walked up the stairs as if it was following an undefiable command. Soon, his black shadow loomed over Lin Sanjiu. A scentless wind swept past her and she couldn’t help tensing up. Oddly, he did not even glance down at her for a second but instead walked to Li Tao’s side like an obedient little dog.
"It's too dark here. Don’t you want to go to the top floor?" Li Tao’s voice rang out clearly in the darkness, "Come up here with me, I’ll explain everything to you."
Lin Sanjiu sneered, "Do you think I’m a fool? Your attack missed so you are going to change your tactics?"
Li Tao shook her head and using a tone as if coaxing a naive child, she said, "Oh, come on. I’m impressed by you so don’t waste it. If I really wanted to harm you, why should I wait for you to reach the top? I don’t even need to use St. Peter… That was just a little test. If you died, I would have just left things as they were."
Although Lin Sanjiu did not have any reason to believe her, she felt that Li Tao was being honest with her. After she hesitated for two seconds, she finally climbed up the stairs towards the top of the winding staircase.
As if reaching the light at the end of a tunnel, after Lin Sanjiu walked away from the narrow staircase, she found herself in a spacious hall lit by the faint light from the stars outside. It was as if everything in the room had gently been sketched out with a silver brush.
The top floor was surprisingly large. The shape of the hall was a combination of a few large and small rectangular spaces. The walls on this floor were much thinner and this perhaps made the hall seem larger than it was. The first thing that Lin Sanjiu noticed when she climbed up was a large, clear, transparent glass wall.
Through the glass wall, she could see a panoramic view of the Garden of Eden under the night sky. Lin Sanjiu surveyed the scenery and immediately frowned slightly.
The Garden of Eden seemed a little too calm... The night view of the city sleeping under the navy blue sky was dotted with the neatly arranged floating street lights and the occasional houses which had their lights on. Lin Sanjiu anticipated a scene of chaos, flames and even explosions across the city, but there was not a single trace of such turmoil right now.
However, Lin Sanjiu didn’t dare to spend too much time thinking about that. After all, she still had two mysterious enemies by her side, and she couldn’t even comprehend their motivations. Her eyes swept across the large hall and she found a corner to stand. She turned and smiled to Li Tao and St. Peter, "I thought the power source should be here."
"No," Li Tao laughed amicably, "Who told you that? That’s just a load of nonsense. The radiation shield doesn’t require any energy source."
As they chatted, Li Tao wandered toward the glass wall. She snapped her fingers and the creature she called ‘St. Peter’ immediately walked to a corner of the room. After a while, it walked out holding a cup of hot tea. Li Tao was behaving as if she was in her own house...
"Why are you so familiar with this place?" Lin Sanjiu asked as she looked at the stairs. She had a clear path to the spiral staircase. "Who are you?"
To Lin Sanjiu, the more pressing question in her mind was whether it was still possible to destroy the radiation shield. As the pale starlight shone through the window, Li Tao threw a glance at Lin Sanjiu. In that single moment, Lin Sanjiu felt as if she had been fully examined from the inside out. Lin Sanjiu felt an ice-cold chill through her body while Li Tao gave her an indulgent smile before turning her eyes to the panoramic view of Garden of Eden beneath them.
"Honestly speaking, Garden of Eden should call me ‘mother’." Li Tao’s words stung with mockery as she knocked on the glass wall with her white fingers.
Lin Sanjiu almost lost her balance. She heard the sound of her blood rushing through the blood vessels in her ears as she stood in a daze, unable to process what Li Tao had said.
"I’m already 94 years old this year," the woman who stood by the glass wall, which reflected the profile of her slender silhouette, explained calmly. "I built Garden of Eden 59 years ago. For some of us, Posthumans, maintaining our looks, extending our lifespans and even gaining immortality isn’t all that uncommon. You don’t have to look at me like this."
Lin Sanjiu closed her mouth. For a moment, she could not digest this piece of news. Many questions floated in her mind but she found herself speechless. It took quite a while before she managed a few words, "You… you said you built this place?"
"Yes." This question seemed to evoke Li Tao’s past memories. She sighed silently and looked up at the dark blue sky. "At that time, the World War had already been ongoing for two years, and the situation was deteriorating each day. Only a few countries were uninvolved in the war. Luckily, my research facility I was working in was situated in one of these neutral countries.
"Even though everybody had nuclear bombs, no one dared to use them. Thus, the war dragged on, despite intensity. But then, a large country suddenly developed a technology which could counter nuclear bombs."
Lin Sanjiu felt nothing else she heard could shock her at this point.
"The principle behind this technology is to compress the power released by the nuclear fission… In any case, the technology was very unstable. It still required a long developmental phase before it could be perfected. However, during war times, which government would forgo using such a weapon? This technology was quickly employed in the real battlefield.
"I think I don’t have to go on about the ensuing chaos that followed. You could probably imagine the scenario. After that big country wreaked havoc for almost a year. The unstable anti-nuclear bomb technology had already caused a serious radiation contamination. It was so bad that even animals in the neutral countries far from the war-torn territories were dying from radiation… To make things worse, other countries involved in the war had somehow gotten access to that technology."
"So, you built the Garden of Eden in order to protect humanity? But, how was
it possible for you to do this alone?" Lin Sanjiu couldn’t help interrupting.
"Creating the Garden of Eden wasn’t as difficult as you think." Li Tao crooked her head slightly, "I utilized some resources and managed to openly propose the idea to the Congress. Under those circ.u.mstances, it was naturally approved. I was in charge of the entire blueprint, from its design to the selection of materials. Garden of Eden was indeed my creation, but…" She paused and watched Lin Sanjiu while a smile surfaced at the corner of her lips, "I did not build it to protect humanity."
Lin Sanjiu gulped. Her throat was dry and she felt the hairs on her back standing on end.
"By then, I had already evolved. My first ability, I don’t mind telling you, was called [A perfect plan could occasionally exist]. Hearing its name, you should have a general idea of how it works, right? Following the plans generated through my ability, ‘Garden of Eden’ was completed on the same day the world was destroyed."
Lin Sanjiu stared at her blankly.
"I am the only one who knows how to get into Garden of Eden." Li Tao’s eyes narrowed into crescent curves as her smile grew wide. Lin Sanjiu couldn’t sense the slightest bit of genuineness in that smile, instead, it creeped her out.
"Can you imagine? Everyone that was still alive wanted to enter this place desperately."
"What happened next?" Lin Sanjiu suppressed her uneasiness and subconsciously turned her eyes away from Li Tao’s smile.
"Have you heard of a social experiment like this? Once, a female performance artist sat motionless in the middle of an exhibition hall and surrounded herself with a variety of items. She promised not to react no matter what people did to her."
Lin Sanjiu was a little taken aback by Li Tao. who had suddenly changed the subject.
"You might probably think that people wouldn’t do anything bad to her, not in an upper-class art gallery in broad daylight. Yes, some people kissed her and someone placed a garland on her head. But there were people who tore away her clothes, stabbed her head with thorns and someone even put a gun to her head. And, yes, the gun was loaded. None of the audience knew her personally, they were all strangers. In the end, the most incredible thing was that there was a clear division in the group between the two extremes of good and bad, like the clear distinction between darkness and light.
"Are you curious why I brought this up? Well, an equal number of people from these two groups were allowed into the Garden of Eden. The pure light and the absolute darkness."
Lin Sanjiu glanced down at the city below her. The air around her froze and none of them moved for quite a long while. After a good few minutes, Lin Sanjiu asked hoarsely, "What happened to the light?"
[Where are the ‘good’ people now? Fifty-nine years later, this city turned as dark as the night sky.] Lin Sanjiu thought to herself.
Li Tao nodded her head in agreement, "As Garden of Eden developed on its own, the light had been consumed. After the good disappeared, women were oppressed and bullied just because they were physically weaker than men. The process and my current observations are in line with my hypothesis." After Li Tao finished her explanation to Lin Sanjiu, she reverted to her previous calm and mild-mannered demeanor.
"I would secretly enter this place every few years, with a different appearance, to conduct a close-up observation. Moreover, I needed to remove some people who would interfere with the experiment. But meeting you this year was really interesting."
"Wait, that means…" Lin Sanjiu’s eyes widened.
"Garden of Eden is my laboratory." Li Tao flashed a gentle smile.
Chapter 150 - St. Peter Isn't the only Sage
"Hahaha!" When Aliba saw the row of heads on his screen, he couldn't restrain his delight and finally burst into laughter. He never imagined that the bloodied severed heads of his hated enemies, who impeded him at every opportunity all these years, could be such a pleasing sight to behold.
"How many more targets are there?" He rapped his table, turning to his pale and nervous vice-chief, "Not many, right?"
The vice-chief hastily pulled out a list and whispered a few words to him.
On the other end of the screen, the Posthumans stood covered in blood. There was a heavy atmosphere in the air and when they occasionally looked at each other, they would notice the anxiety on each other's faces.
The Posthumans had already been re-dispatched multiple times and the number of heads on the floor just kept increasing. When a team reassembled in the city hall once again, the screen lit up with a new list of 'missions' from Aliba. The women did not want to submit to Aliba's deployments willingly, but quite a few of their wounded and incapacitated companions were now hostages of the Military and Police Department, so they simply had no choice but to fulfill the new mission.
"Let's go." Bai Xiaoke stood up. Her male escort stood up at the same with Xueqin on his back. "It's stifling here. I'd rather go outside," she commented unhappily.
The other two members in their team followed behind her wordlessly as they went to receive their next assignment.
The location of their new target was near Guang Zhu's residence, the place they illegally occupied for a night. The assassination target, the Head of Technology Department, had probably noticed the fishy ongoings, so he set up many defense mechanisms and traps—many of which were clearly products developed by the Garden of Eden Laboratories. It took a considerable amount of effort before they got their hands on the man's severed head.
Xueqin looked out from the dead man's bedroom window and saw his servant screaming and stumbling as he ran far away. After seeing that, she lowered her eyes with a bland expression. She didn't care if that escapee alerted the authorities or anyone else. After all, these were all Aliba's future problems.
Meanwhile, Dong Haohao and the others searched the rooms in the mansion. Usually, people who held power with their high posts in the government had their own stash of Special Items. They would definitely be helpful to them, as they currently carried no items.
Bai Xiaoke held a baton in her hands after she messed up the entire cloakroom. She walked out sighing exasperatedly, "This guy has too few Special Items. He only has all these useless creations from the Garden of Eden Laboratories.
Actually, the products from the laboratories weren't all that bad. They really gave their team a hard time just now, and they were quite effective. Unfortunately, most of the items that belonged to that official were just too large to carry around.
"It'd be great if Xiao Jiu was around, she would be able to store everything," Bai Xiaoke said dejectedly. When she thought of Lin Sanjiu, she couldn't help feeling worried. She placed her baton down and tried calling Li Tao again.
When the others heard the ringing sounds from the communicator, they looked over at her. But, when no one picked up even after a few rings, they turned their focus back on their scavenging. Not even they could tell if they were disappointed or already numbed.
"Damn. Forget it," Bai Xiaoke swore quietly, reaching out to cut the call.
But the second before she touched the button, the ringing from the communicator stopped. Bai Xiaoke was stunned momentarily, and Li Tao's face suddenly appeared on the screen. Li Tao smiled, showing no unusual behavior or expression.
"Oh, it's you. How are things there?
[She looks different.] A fleeting thought surfaced in Bai Xiaoke's mind, but it faded to the back of her mind and was quickly forgotten. Right now, she was just excited and surprised, "You finally picked up! What happened? Where are you? Did you manage to find Xiao Jiu?"
After asking a barrage of questions, Bai Xiaoke noticed the background behind Li Tao.
The latter was standing in a dark place which was only faintly lit by the moonlight from the sky.
[Where is she?]
"It's a long story. I found her." Li Tao soft laughter interrupted Bai Xiaoke's train of thought. She looked around at the women who surrounded her and asked, "Why are your expressions so weird? Quick, tell me where are the both of you?"
"I think most of Aliba's enemies are dead. I'm not sure how he will deal with us..." Bai Xiaoke wiped her face worriedly. It was only then that they realized that they still hadn't seen Lin Sanjiu over the communicator.
"Where is Xiao Jiu? Does she have any ideas on how to handle this? Wasn't she planning to destroy the glass globe? What is the situation now?" Xueqin couldn't help asking.
Li Tao opened her mouth as if she was about to reply them. But the screen suddenly went black. The group of women stared with dropped jaws at the communicator as the mansion became silent.
"I already did as you requested and you know how they're doing now." Li Tao took off the communicator from her wrist leisurely. She crushed it gently between her fingers, turning it to powder which scattered to the ground. "What do you plan to do now?" she said with a smile while looking at Lin Sanjiu.
Lin Sanjiu pursed her lips. When she first heard Li Tao's astounding 'confession', anger and shock assaulted her like a raging tsunami. But, for some reasons, after she heard about her companions situation, those emotions ebbed and she was left with a clear, calm rationality.
Regardless, she was only left with one route now.
"I have some questions which I wish you could clarify." When Lin Sanjiu spoke, even Li Tao was a little surprised by her composure.
The latter immediately smiled, "Go ahead. If I can answer them, I definitely will."
"First, what is the purpose of your experiment? It can't be that you just want to watch people die, right?"
Although it was just the first question, the other party frowned as if she had some trouble answering and hesitated for quite some time.
"Um... To keep it brief, I suppose I could call the experiment 'A Test For Human Recyclability'. Look," she placed her finger on the glass and tapped the area with the view of the city, "The current state of Garden of Eden is a clear display of Gresham's law[1]. Objectively speaking, there is only garbage here."